Pete Davidson Says He Empathizes With Ye Despite Their Ugly History

Empathy probably isn't the reaction most people expected from Pete Davidson toward Kanye West. Their feud became intensely personal while Davidson was dating Kim Kardashian, with Ye repeatedly attacking him online and eventually depicting a clay version of the comedian being kidnapped and buried in the “Eazy” video. Davidson admits the treatment got to him. Still, looking back several years later, he sounds less interested in holding onto the anger than in understanding what may have been happening on the other side.

Speaking with Variety, Davidson pointed to the pressures surrounding Ye’s life and the loss of his mother while explaining why he can empathize with him. “He’s also lost a parent and has mental stuff, and I don’t know how he deals with it or who he has around him,” he said. Davidson compared Ye’s level of fame to the much smaller dose of public scrutiny he has experienced and suggested that constant provocation without enough genuine support can make someone want to destroy everything around them.

“What people don’t understand about that dude — and I’m not one-one-millionth as talented or influential or powerful as that dude, but I have dealt with a fraction of what he’s had to deal with public-wise — is that’ll do it,” said Davidson. “When people are so far up your ass and constantly pushing and provoking you and not showing you love, you want to burn it all. I think it got to a certain point where he was like, ‘Leave me the f*ck alone. I’m just going to say crazy sh*t.’ There’s zero way he really feels like that.”

However, having compassion doesn't mean Davidson is pretending the feud was harmless. He told Variety that what bothered him most was Ye targeting someone whose mental health struggles were already public. Davidson has spoken openly for years about those issues, which made some of Ye’s rhetoric feel particularly cruel. As Entertainment Weekly noted, Davidson remembered the attacks as West essentially telling him to kill himself and admitted they pushed him emotionally.

The hostility unfolded while Kardashian and Kanye were still navigating their divorce. Davidson began dating Kardashian in late 2021, and Ye quickly made him a recurring target in posts and music. Davidson now jokes that he “cleared the path” for whoever Kardashian dated next because the first man to enter her life after Ye was probably going to absorb that anger.

Even with that history, Davidson does not seem interested in reducing Ye to the ugliest things he said during that period. Coming from the man Ye once made into a public enemy, that's a level of grace few people would have expected.